Saturday, 8 January 2011

My Soul to Take - Rachel Vincent

Other Titles in this Series:My Soul to Save (18/02), My Soul to Save (15/04), My Soul to Steal (N/A)

Something is wrong with Kaylee Cavanaugh...She can sense when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest boy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about the dark forces behind Kaylee’s power than she does.And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason and only Kaylee knows who’ll be next she realises that finding a boyfriend is the least of her worries!

My Soul to Take is a fast-paced and addictive paranormal novel that I fell instantly in love with.

The first thing that struck me about My Soul to Take is its level of mystery. There so many questions brought up in the first 100 or so pages: why does she scream? Who’s killing the girls? What’s going on?! As I didn’t read many reviews of this before I read it, I had no idea what Kaylee was going to turn out to be. Imagine my surprise when it was revealed that she was a bean sidhe – or a banshee as they’re more commonly known. Now I don't know about you, but I’ve never come across them in fiction before and I didn't really know anything about them. It’s turns out they’re a kind of faery!

Kaylee’s struggles to deal with the screaming and to come to terms with her heritage were very realistic as her ‘episodes’ caused her major pain and stress and led her to think that she was crazy. It’s not often that heroines of supernatural YA react like I would. I instantly liked Kaylee because of this. And then you’ve got Nash who, naturally, was completely gorgeous and popular, but also, quite unusually, Kaylee’s equal. I did notice something about their relationship that made me laugh, though: all of the important conversations they had happened over food.

As much as I loved My Soul to Take, I did have a minor issue. Kaylee’s best friend, Emma, seemed to disappear for the middle of the novel when Nash and Kaylee’s relationship started to develop due to a rather convenient grounding. However, Rachel Vincent more than redeemed herself with action-packed ending that solved the mysteries in a rather shocking way.

I loved My Soul to Take and I can't wait to get my hands on book two in the series, My Soul to Save, when it's released next month.

YAY, I loved this book too. I'd never seen a book about banshees before this either, I thought it was fantastic. I noticed that Emma was sort of dropped towards the middle, but I loved Nash and Kaylee together so much that I didn't really care :)

About Me

Hi, my name is Sophie and I adore YA. I'm a recent English Literature and Creative Writing graduate of Bath Spa University. I'm missing it terribly and using books to soothe the ache of real, adult life.